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next-upnext upauthorJanko RoettgersNoneDo you know what's coming next up in the world of tech and entertainment? Get Janko Roettgers' newsletter every Thursday.9147dfd6b1
December 10, 2020
Disney's streaming service continues to grow at a rapid pace: The streaming service now has 86.8 million paying subscribers, Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced at the company's annual investor day on Thursday. Disney also announced a new Star-branded streaming service that is being integrated into Disney+ in some territories, and a slight price increase: Disney+ will cost $7.99, up from $6.99, starting next March. Pricing in other territories will also increase.
Star will be available as part of Disney+ in Western Europe, Canada and New Zealand starting in February. Star will offer a number of Disney shows and movies currently available to U.S. audiences on Hulu; consumers will have to unlock the content because it includes R-rated titles and other content that stands out from the family-friendly Disney+ fare.
Star won't be part of Disney+ everywhere: The company will be making a standalone Star+ service available in Latin America. Disney is adopting the brand from India, where it acquired Hotstar last year, and used it as a key driver for Disney+ adoption. One-third of all Disney+ subscribers are currently located in India, said Disney International DTC Chairman Rebecca Campbell: "Our launches around the world have been a key factor to subscriber growth to date."
Disney executives also used the event to give investors an update on the company's other streaming services. Hulu now has 38.8 million subscribers, including 4 million who pay for the company's live TV service. ESPN+ reached 11.5 million subscribers by early December.
This puts Disney years ahead of its own forecasts for its direct-to-consumer businesses. When Disney first announced plans to launch Disney+, the company predicted that it would reach between 60 million and 90 million subscribers by 2024. The company had planned to reach 40 million to 60 million subscribers for Hulu by 2024, as well as 8 million to 12 million for ESPN+. On Thursday, Disney updated its Disney+ guidance; the company is now expecting the service to have 230 million to 260 million subscribers by 2024.
The latest number drop also means that Disney+ added more than 13 million subscribers over the past two months. Disney executives revealed last month that the service had reached 73.7 million subscribers on Oct. 3, which marked the end of its fiscal fourth quarter.
Disney executives said Thursday that the company was prioritizing its streaming services over other areas of its business going forward. As part of this strategy, Disney committed to the release of a number of original Marvel, "Star Wars" and Disney/Pixar series exclusively on Disney+ over the coming years. In addition, Disney will release 15 live action and animated Disney and Pixar feature films on the service.
However, Disney stopped short of a day-and-date movie release strategy like the one Warner Bros. plans to implement in 2021. WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar announced last week that the studio would be releasing all of its movies on HBO Max on the day of their theater premiere — an announcement that caught theater chains like AMC by surprise.
Disney, on the other hand, is still nominally committed to the theatrical window, with some exceptions; the company will release the live-action movie "Raya and the Last Dragon" as a paid premium title on Disney+ when it reaches theaters next March, much like it did with "Mulan" last summer.
Disney media and entertainment distribution chairman Kareem Daniel signaled that the company could adopt similar models for other titles down the road. The company had the ability to "quickly reevaluate" its release strategy, Daniel said, adding that it would ultimately do what was best for consumers.
Update: This article was updated at 5:30 p.m. PT to include more information about guidance and pricing.
Janko Roettgers
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
Power
Yes, GameStop is a content moderation issue for Reddit
The same tools that can be used to build mass movements can be used by bad actors to manipulate the masses later on. Consider Reddit warned.
WallStreetBets' behavior may not be illegal. But that doesn't mean it's not a problem for Reddit.
Image: Omar Marques/Getty Images
January 27, 2021
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
January 27, 2021
The Redditors who are driving up the cost of GameStop stock just to pwn the hedge funds that bet on its demise may not be breaking the law. But this show of force by the subreddit r/WallStreetBets still represents a new and uncharted front in the evolution of content moderation on social media platforms.
In a statement to Protocol, a Reddit spokesperson said the company's site-wide policies "prohibit posting illegal content or soliciting or facilitating illegal transactions. We will review and cooperate with valid law enforcement investigations or actions as needed."
<p>It's still unclear whether any such investigations will result from this, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is "monitoring" the situation. But the fact is, Reddit writes lots of site-wide rules that have nothing to do with whether certain behavior is illegal. Reddit is <a href="https://www.protocol.com/reddit-powermods-war" target="_blank">unique among platforms</a> in that it leaves much of its content decisions to the moderators of different subreddits. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Still, the company does have rules. It <a href="https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043071072" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">prohibits</a>, for example, "directing unwanted invective at someone" or "following them from subreddit to subreddit," classifying that as harassing, bullying behavior. Redditors aren't allowed to send "large amounts of private messages to users who are not expecting them" or repeatedly post "unrelated/off-topic/link-farmed content," because, under Reddit's <a href="https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043504051" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">rules</a>, that's spam.</p><p>That means if Reddit decides that what r/WallStreetBets is doing is dangerous or disruptive, it could very well take action. That would be tricky for Reddit. Given the range of offensive stuff that regularly appears on the platform, it could be tough to justify outlawing stock trade tips. So far, that hasn't happened, and the Reddit spokesperson was unable to comment on whether any content policies related to the GameStop issue might be implemented in the future. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, for one, seemed unconcerned in a Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/alexisohanian/status/1354407436732387335?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">thread</a> Wednesday. "It's a perfect storm at a time when lots of people are hurting, interest rates are so low, inescapable student loan debts loom, and every major institution has caught Ls during a /global pandemic/ over the last year," Ohanian wrote. "This is something to believe in."</p><p>That may be true for now. But experts on social media manipulation argue the model WallStreetBets has created could morph into a bigger long-term problem for Reddit. "The WallStreetBets manipulation of [GameStop] is now the best template for how one could monetize an influence operation," <a href="https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1354499573209653251?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tweeted</a> Stanford researcher Alex Stamos who, as Facebook's former chief security officer, worked on detecting and rooting out foreign influence operations after the 2016 election. "I don't know if any laws were broken this time, but Reddit now has a problem: it is the home for a community of hundreds of thousands of people who have demonstrated the ability to move billions of dollars based upon the urging of, at most, a couple dozen anonymous accounts."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Facebook's current chief security officer, Nathaniel Gleicher, agreed with Stamos, <a href="https://twitter.com/ngleicher/status/1354517057673392129?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tweeting</a>: "Good reminder that while political [information operations are] a serious threat, there are many harmful cases of these tactics driving financial gain."</p><p>Gleicher added: "[Money] is a driver across security threats, from hacking to phishing to good old bank fraud, & [information operations are] no exception. Getting ahead of how these tactics enable fraud is essential to disincentivize bad actors."</p><p>To be clear: There's no evidence that the GameStop mob has any ties to a malicious influence operation, and aside from some hedge funds that tried to short GameStop in the first place, it's not immediately obvious who WallStreetBets is hurting. What are hedge funds anyway if not an institutionally sanctioned pool of people betting on the success or failure of businesses for profit? For now, it's easy to root for the underdogs banding together to stick it to the man. </p><p>But one thing that seems obvious from the last decade or more on the internet is that the same tools that can be used to build mass movements — be they political or financial — can be used by bad actors to manipulate the masses later on. If and when that happens, Reddit will have few excuses for not being prepared. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
Power
It chased fraudsters. Now, Pindrop wants to simplify streaming.
The security startup has struck a partnership with TiVo to personalize voice search.
Pindrop is partnering with TiVo to bring its voice authentication technology to smart TVs and streaming devices.
Photo: Scott Eells/Getty Images
January 26, 2021
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
January 26, 2021
Chicken Man was trying to be clever.
Calling up banks to trick unsuspecting customer service agents, the scam artist would always play a recording of chickens in the background to mask his voice. Security experts at Pindrop, a voice authentication startup used by major financial institutions to screen 1.1 billion calls last year, got such a kick out of his efforts that they even named a conference room after him. However, Chicken Man couldn't defeat Pindrop's technology, and ultimately helped the company prepare for a new challenge: a typical family's living room.
<p>On Tuesday, Pindrop announced a partnership with TiVo to bring its voice authentication technology to smart TVs and streaming devices. Instead of weeding out fraudsters, the technology is now being used to personalize voice search results and present the right content recommendations to each member of the family. Soon, the company even plans to infer emotional states from a person's voice, and tweak content recommendations accordingly.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Thanks to the unwitting help of fraudsters like Chicken Man, Pindrop has gotten very good at dealing with background noise. During a demo given to Protocol, an Android TV device featuring Pindrop's tech was able to identify two different speakers even with a blender running on high gear, as well as with one of the participants wearing a muffling N95 mask. <br></p><p>Personalization for smart devices is nothing new. Streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ have for years offered user profiles to personalize content recommendations. Similarly, Google and Amazon are both offering consumers a way to personalize responses from their respective voice assistants. </p><p>But while the tech and streaming giants require users to actively set up user profiles and authenticate the voices of each member of their household, Pindrop is taking a more organic approach. "We do something called passive clustering," explained CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan. Pindrop's algorithms analyze over 250 voice characteristics, including intonation, rhythm and style. </p><p>In the living room, the technology is being used to develop unique profiles for everyone in the household; the profiles are then connected to content recommendation engines like the one developed by TiVo. Consumers can decide to name the profiles for each family member, but Pindrop doesn't need to know anything about the real identity of each user.</p><p>Once the first streaming products powered by Pindrop launch, the startup wants to fine-tune its technology to detect the emotion and age of consumers to further improve recommendations. TiVo has yet to announce any products that will feature Pindrop's technology, but Balasubramaniyan said that we may get an update on that in the next few months. In addition to its legacy DVR business, TiVo also launched its own Android TV streaming dongle last year, and is licensing its voice technology to other companies.<br></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Pindrop's work for the living room also helped the company improve some of its other security efforts. One example: Live call center conversations are typically a lot longer than the voice commands used to search streaming services, but by optimizing for these short phrases, Pindrop was also able to improve its screening of interactions with the kind of automated call center platforms that ask consumers for one-word choices.</p><p>"Solving this problem for TV has helped us in the call center world," Balasubramaniyan said.</p>
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Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
Power
What TV remotes tell us about power struggles in streaming
TV remote controls are a major battlefield in the TV wars, which are fought one branded button at a time.
LG's 2021 smart TV remote control features a total of three buttons for voice control.
Image: LG
January 13, 2021
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
January 13, 2021
Don't touch that dial: As TV manufacturers are unveiling their 2021 models at this year's virtual CES, they're also giving us a first look at the remote controls that will be shipping with those big, shiny and smart TV sets.
There were a few surprises. LG's remotes come with built-in NFC to transfer videos from mobile devices to the TV, and Samsung's remotes incorporate solar cells that are meant to reduce battery waste. The new crop of 2021 TV remotes also perfectly encapsulates the conflicts and power struggles in the TV industry, from streaming services vying for attention to voice assistant platforms' fierce competition.
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There are more branded buttons on this year's TVs than ever, giving us a taste of the conflicts behind the scenes.
</p><h3>Money and power: The branded button</h3><p>
It's been 10 years since <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2011-01-04-netflix-one-click-remotes-coming-to-nearly-every-device-it-str.html" target="_blank">Netflix first partnered</a> with makers of streaming devices and smart TVs to add a dedicated Netflix button to their remote controls. Fast forward a decade, and those shortcut buttons are ubiquitous — and multiplying.<br>
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Take Hisense for example. The Chinese smart TV maker ships some of its 2021 TVs with a remote that has six branded buttons for streaming services, including not only Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube, but also free streaming service Tubi as well as relative newcomers Disney+ and Peacock.
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Branded buttons like these have long been paid product placements, with streaming services paying around $1 per remote to put their brand closer to a consumer's fingertips. However, as streaming services grow, these buttons have also become part of numerous turf wars. Netflix, for instance, has for years forced device makers to include a branded button in order to get access to its app, according to industry insiders.
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And while TV makers were long happy to just take the extra revenue, they're increasingly looking to compete with their own streaming services. Remotes from both LG and Samsung feature dedicated buttons for their respective ad-supported streaming services, with Samsung notably only giving branded buttons to two other streaming services (Netflix and Prime Video).
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Not every company is that constrained, though. Including a button for its own collection of free streaming channels, Vizio's 2021 remote features a whopping seven branded shortcut buttons.
</p><h3>Disputed territory: Smart TV platform remotes</h3><p>
While companies like LG and Samsung have long designed TV remote controls to their own liking, TV makers that license smart TV operating systems have much less freedom. TVs that run Roku's operating system need to ship with a Roku remote, whereas TVs using Amazon's smart TV OS tend to include remotes that look just like those that come with the company's own streaming devices.
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Google has given TV and streaming device makers more liberties in the past, resulting in a range of different remotes. Now, the company apparently seems to institute stricter requirements. Google has developed its own reference remote, and is said to "strongly recommend" that manufacturers adopt it, <a href="https://twitter.com/androidtv_rumor/status/1348632021749407744" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">according to</a> the usually well-informed Android TV Guide Twitter account.
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This new mandate coincides with Google's switch to its new branded user interface, which emphasizes Google-selected content recommendations over individual apps. As part of that strategy change, Google is also imploring TV and streaming device makers to include a dedicated button for its Watchlist feature, which is essentially a bookmarking service for individual shows and movies across desktop, mobile and TV.
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There's only one problem: Netflix is not on board with platforms disaggregating its catalog, and instead prefers that viewers fire up the Netflix app to discover new titles. As a result, <a href="https://www.techhive.com/article/3599868/netflix-drags-streaming-tv-backward-cord-cutters-take-note.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netflix has forced Google</a> to disable the Watchlist feature for Netflix originals on TV-connected devices. Users can still add Netflix tiles to their Google Watchlist on the web, but they can't edit that list or even rate Netflix titles on Android TV devices — making the Watchlist button effectively a shortcut to disputed territory.
</p><h3>The final frontier: Voice assistants</h3><p>
The microphone button has quickly become one of the most coveted properties on TV remote controls. Google has made its own Google Assistant the default voice platform for Android TV devices, and Amazon is relying on its Alexa assistant for TVs running Fire TV OS. On third-party devices, the two companies are increasingly butting heads.
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For example, South Korean electronics giant LG is using its own webOS as the software platform for its smart TVs, but began adding support for third-party voice assistants a few years ago — a process that hasn't always gone smoothly.
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In 2020, LG let consumers access the Google Assistant via its main voice search button, effectively making it the default voice engine for its TVs. The company also had a partnership with Amazon to integrate Alexa, but Google rejected the idea of sharing the mic button, forcing LG to institute a less than intuitive workaround: People who preferred to use Amazon's voice assistant were instructed to forgo the mic button altogether and long-press the Prime Video button to trigger Alexa.
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This time around, LG decided to give Amazon's voice assistant a slightly more prominent placement in the form of a dedicated Alexa button. To keep all things equal, it also added a dedicated Google Assistant button to its 2021 remote control. And because LG's webOS does offer some basic voice commands to change channels or open apps, the company also kept the default microphone button on its remote.
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The result: three separate voice assistant buttons on a single remote control.
</p><h3>Why those buttons won't disappear anytime soon</h3><p>
Consumers may have mixed feelings about all those branded buttons; some even try to figure out how to <a href="https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/10/30/shield-tv-remote-remap-netflix/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reprogram their remote controls</a>. However, people do also like cheap TVs, and with the average purchase price of a TV set <a href="https://www.protocol.com/tcl-roku-tv-profit-smartphone" target="_self">declining by 60% between 2014 and 2019</a>, manufacturers have to find new ways to monetize their products. A few dollars here and there can make a real difference in a business with razor-thin margins, and Samsung and Roku have demonstrated that <a href="https://www.protocol.com/samsung-tv-plus-on-phones" target="_self">there's real money to be made</a> in running and heavily promoting their own ad-supported streaming services.
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Some of those extra buttons could be avoided if tech companies just played nice. Amazon, for instance, has long advocated for voice interoperability, which would allow companies like LG to add just a single microphone button to its TV remotes that could offer access to a multitude of voice assistants.
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Google has been steadfast in rejecting such proposals, all but guaranteeing that future TVs will continue to have a whole lot of button bloat.</p>
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Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
Protocol | China
More women are joining China's tech elite, but 'Wolf Culture' isn't going away
It turns out getting rid of misogyny in Chinese tech isn't just a numbers game.
Chinese tech companies that claim to value female empowerment may act differently behind closed doors.
Photo: Qilai Shen/Getty Images
January 27, 2021
Shen Lu is a Reporter with Protocol | China. She has spent six years covering China from inside and outside its borders. Previously, she was a fellow at Asia Society's ChinaFile and a Beijing-based producer for CNN. Her writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, The New York Times and POLITICO, among other publications. Shen Lu is a founding member of Chinese Storytellers, a community serving and elevating Chinese professionals in the global media industry.
January 27, 2021
A woman we'll call Fan had heard about the men of Alibaba before she joined its high-profile affiliate about three years ago. Some of them were "greasy," she said, to use a Chinese term often describing middle-aged men with poor boundaries. Fan tells Protocol that lewd conversations were omnipresent at team meetings and private events, and even women would feel compelled to crack off-color jokes in front of the men. Some male supervisors treated younger female colleagues like personal assistants.
Within six months, despite the cachet the lucrative job carried, Fan wanted to quit.
A woman we'll call Zhang had a similar experience at her former employer, Baidu. She told Protocol that senior colleagues joked that Zhang and her younger female coworkers were hired to "please their eyes."
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Alibaba and Baidu look and act like they value female empowerment. Alibaba, the ecommerce giant, hosts a <a href="https://www.alizila.com/speakers-talk-womens-empowerment-at-alibaba-conference/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurship</a> every year. Its founder, Jack Ma, has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUuEryO0ogg" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">positioned</a> himself as a champion for women and has repeatedly said that Alibaba <a href="https://www.qianzhan.com/people/detail/271/140925-908063c9.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">owes its success to its female workers</a>. Ma has touted the company's <a href="https://ishare.ifeng.com/c/s/7pVlMyNV25i" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">relatively hefty share</a> of women in top management — currently, <a href="https://www.alibabagroup.com/cn/about/leadership" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">six out of 14</a> of the most senior roles are staffed by women. Search engine behemoth Baidu, too, likes to<a href="http://d.youth.cn/newtech/202012/t20201230_12640898.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> tout</a> its relatively high ratio — <a href="http://esg.baidu.com/Uploads/File/2020/06/18/u5eeb598d72472.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">46%</a> — of women in management.
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"Workplace equality is a core value of Baidu. Female employees account for 43% of Baidu's workforce and 46% of management. Women play significant roles as top executives of the company driving technology innovation and strategy," Baidu said in an email reply. Alibaba did not respond to Protocol's requests for comment.
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So why do women like Fan and Zhang have such a rough go of it?
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This is the terrible paradox at the heart of Chinese tech, one that will threaten its capacity to innovate in the future. A wave of Chinese women are joining elite tech companies and their boardrooms, often in numbers that compare favorably to tech industries abroad, but it turns out that getting rid of sexism is far more than a numbers game. Women in Chinese tech are marginalized, demoralized and exhausted. When they get home, they're still expected to shoulder most of the childcare and household chores.
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The result: Those who manage to ascend have to learn to play — and win — a man's game. This paradox is going to sharpen as more women enter tech and become aware of gender inequality.
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Women are increasingly populating Chinese tech offices. Data shows that some of China's biggest internet companies, including <a href="https://pic2.zhimg.com/80/v2-64ca7bcc8aa012b59dbd90cdb6c7b809_1440w.jpg" target="_blank">ByteDance</a>, <a href="http://esg.baidu.com/Uploads/File/2020/06/18/u5eeb598d72472.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Baidu</a> and ride-hailing giant <a href="https://www.yicai.com/news/5260027.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Didi Chuxing</a>, each employ at least 40% female staff. By way of comparison, <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/4467/female-employees-at-tech-companies/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">statistics show</a> that female employees fill between 28% and 42% of roles at America's five largest tech companies. In India, women make up <a href="https://go.451research.com/women-in-tech-india-employment-trends.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">34%</a> of the tech workforce; in the U.K., the figure is <a href="https://technation.io/insights/diversity-and-inclusion-in-uk-tech-companies/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">19%</a>.
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Women have also made it into Chinese tech leadership. <a href="https://www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/women-in-technology-2019" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Seventy percent</a> of Chinese startups have at least one female executive, a higher proportion than companies in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, according to a 2019 survey conducted by Silicon Valley Bank. And more than 1,000 women have<a href="https://xw.qq.com/cmsid/20200308A0L9J400" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> made it into the boardrooms</a> of China's public tech companies, according to a study conducted by Tianyancha, a data technology service company.
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Yet Alibaba and Baidu are not the only "greasy" companies. Leading Chinese tech firms, including Tencent, have posted job ads depicting their female employees as "pretty" or "goddesses" to attract male candidates, according to a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/04/23/only-men-need-apply/gender-discrimination-job-advertisements-china#_ftn99" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2018 Human Rights Watch report</a>. In 2017, WeChat's parent company Tencent apologized after <a href="https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1815/video-of-women-on-their-knees-deals-blow-to-tencent-image" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">footage emerged</a> of a corporate event where female employees were kneeling while using their teeth to open water bottles placed between men's legs. A <a href="https://www.digitaling.com/articles/16221.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2012 job ad</a> for food-delivery group Meituan declared that "finding a job equals finding a woman," featuring a suggestive image of a thong hanging between a woman's legs. "Do what you most want to do," the ad concluded, using a verb for "do" that colloquially means "fuck." In the years since, Meituan has repeatedly depicted young women in its promotional ads as <a href="https://www.yunyingpai.com/extend/518996.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">food on the plate</a> for delivery.
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In gender studies, the <a href="https://tidsskrift.dk/scandinavian_political_studies/article/download/32616/30682" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">theory of critical mass</a> hypothesizes that deliberative bodies must be made up of at least <a href="https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/eql-men/index.html#:~:text=Women%20have%20gained%20the%20right,States%20of%20the%20United%20Nations.&text=The%20figure%20of%2030%20percent,content%20of%20political%20decision%2Dmaking." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">30%</a> women to impact policymaking. But at least when it comes to tech, it's clear that neither a high percentage of female execs nor a workforce approaching gender parity equate to workplace equality. Julie Yujie Chen, who teaches at the University of Toronto and has researched the experience of Chinese women in tech, doesn't believe the presence of more women executives in a Chinese tech company will work in favor of female employees. "Women in tech is not a representation issue," she told Protocol. "It is about challenging the norms."
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Lin Zhang, an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire who has interviewed dozens of female entrepreneurs in China's tech companies, said many of the women who thrive in this ultra-competitive, male-dominated industry not only have become resigned to workplace masculinity and sexism, but have internalized it. "Because of the generally hostile gender culture in China, there's not much solidarity among women," Zhang said. "Now that they're up there, they feel like, 'I have paid my dues. It's your turn.'"
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Alibaba's Fan echoes this: "Although women are much present in Alibaba's senior management, they all have transformed themselves to be greasier than the men. That's how they entered that powerful circle."
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Shi is a 30-year-old manager of a content-producing team at Nasdaq-listed video-sharing platform Bilibili. Like Fan and the other female tech workers interviewed for this story, she spoke to Protocol on the condition that she be identified by a pseudonym to avoid retaliation from her employer. Shi said the women in her company leadership "completely subscribe to the 'wolf' mentality. They are just as territorial, aggressive and exploitative as the men."
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One result is tech products that objectify women and reinforce gender stereotypes, at least in the way they are marketed and used. Didi Chuxing is helmed by a woman — company president Jean Liu — and Didi's staff was <a href="https://www.yicai.com/news/5260027.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">40%</a> female in 2017, the most recent year for which statistics are available. However, it encountered scandal with Hitch, a carpooling service launched in 2015 that suggested hookups between drivers and passengers in its 2018 <a href="https://new.qq.com/omn/20180828/20180828A08PZK.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ads</a>. Two female Hitch passengers were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/business/didi-chuxing-murder-rape-women.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesworld" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">raped and killed</a> that same year. The general manager at Hitch was a woman named Huang Jieli.
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Even relatively "woke" Chinese companies demand a lot of their employees. A major culprit is Chinese tech's infamous 996 work schedule — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days per week — which can wear workers down. I spoke with most interviewees after 10 p.m. in China, after they had finished a long day's work. Message alerts from colleagues often interrupted our conversations.
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This work culture further disadvantages women because of the larger milieu in which they live. Women still shoulder most of the childcare and housework burden in Chinese households. A 2019 National Bureau of Statistics <a href="https://cnlgbtdata.com/files/uploads/2020/01/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E7%A4%BE%E4%BC%9A%E4%B8%AD%E7%9A%84%E5%A5%B3%E4%BA%BA%E5%92%8C%E7%94%B7%E4%BA%BA2019EN-final.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">report</a> showed that women spent more than twice as much time as men on unpaid household work. "The lack of reliable childcare service becomes a structural barrier for women to advance their career," said Chen, "especially in sectors like the tech industry."
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Although a large number of young Chinese women have joined tech, they are more likely to concentrate at the lower end of the skill and productivity spectrum, such as human resources, public relations and business operations. Programming, often the power center, remains a male-dominated division, with female programmers comprising only 10.4% of its ranks in 2020, according to a<a href="https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/109185515" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> report by Chinese digital working platform Proginn</a>. (In the U.S., figures range between <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-developer-gender/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">8%</a> and <a href="https://www.frgconsulting.com/blog/female-developers-workforce/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">11%</a>.)
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Of course, China has its share of relatively egalitarian companies. Take ByteDance. While it spent last year at the center of U.S. controversy over data-sharing with Beijing, it's seen at home as valuing diversity and inclusion. Dong, who works in the ByteDance HR department, told Protocol she chose the company for its relatively egalitarian culture. It was the only prospective employer that did not inquire about her marital status when she was job-hunting in 2018, and the supervisor of the department she was interviewing for was a woman in her late 30s.
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But Dong thinks ByteDance is swimming against the tide. She says several senior female colleagues in her team still had to quit because they couldn't juggle work and childcare demands. It's not a problem unique to China, but female workers there are getting less help than in other countries. "Tech companies in other countries are trying to create a better environment for female workers who face similar social expectations," Dong said. "But in China, they won't specifically create supportive policies for you. The baseline is lower. It's like, 'I'm already doing well by not treating you badly.'"
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Shen Lu is a Reporter with Protocol | China. She has spent six years covering China from inside and outside its borders. Previously, she was a fellow at Asia Society's ChinaFile and a Beijing-based producer for CNN. Her writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, The New York Times and POLITICO, among other publications. Shen Lu is a founding member of Chinese Storytellers, a community serving and elevating Chinese professionals in the global media industry.
Power
Roku is becoming the most powerful company in streaming
A growing user base will give it even more power in content negotiations.
Roku's emerging as one of the streaming war's biggest winners.
Photo: Luke Sharrett/Getty Images
January 11, 2021
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
January 8, 2021
Roku's bet on smart TVs is paying off: Seven years after the company first began licensing its operating system to TV manufacturers, it has become a market leader in North America. Roku and its hardware partners sold more smart TVs in the U.S. in 2020 than competitors like Samsung, LG and Vizio, according to data from the NPD Group released by Roku on Friday.
Roku TVs had a 38% market share in the U.S. and a 31% market share in Canada, according to NPD's data. Roku also announced earlier this week that it had ended 2020 with 51.2 million active accounts, adding around 14 million accounts over the past 12 months. Altogether, consumers streamed 58.7 billion hours of entertainment through their Roku devices in 2020, according to a news release.
<p>Both data points demonstrate how much of a force the company has become in North America, giving it even more power in negotiations with media companies looking to run their services on Roku streaming sticks and TVs. However, they also highlight how much Roku's business has been solely focused on the TV space, giving competitors a chance to dominate other smart device categories.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>After first making a name for itself with its streaming boxes, Roku began licensing its operating system to TV manufacturers in 2014, with one of its early licensing partners including China's TCL, <a href="https://www.protocol.com/tcl-roku-tv-profit-smartphone" target="_self">then virtually unknown in North America</a>. With affordable TV sets and a UI that emphasized simplicity over fancy new features, TCL and Roku managed to grow their market share year after year; at the end of 2019, every third smart TV sold in the U.S. was running Roku's operating system.</p><p>The growing popularity of Roku TVs and streaming devices has helped the company grow its advertising business and negotiate more favorable contracts with media companies looking to launch their apps on its platform. Roku is not only demanding revenue and ad-sharing agreements for any app that runs on its platform, but is also increasingly pressing media companies to make parts of their catalog available via its own free Roku Channel streaming service. Last year, negotiations between AT&T and Roku broke down, resulting in HBO Max not being available in Roku devices for six months.</p><p>Roku's expansion into other hardware categories has been more of a mixed bag. The company has made its own wireless speakers that work only with Roku TVs and streaming devices, but listings on various ecommerce websites suggest only modest demand. Roku's wireless bookshelf speakers were ranked No. 2,850 on Amazon.com's sales charts for consumer electronics devices at the time of writing. For comparison, Amazon's own Echo Dot speaker ranked No. 1, with other Amazon speakers and smart displays following closely behind.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>At one point, Roku developed a dedicated Wi-Fi product <a href="https://www.techhive.com/article/3445378/a-fix-for-your-wi-fi-problems-from-roku.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">called Roku Relay</a> that was supposed to optimize wireless connectivity for Roku streaming devices. The company tested Relay with a small number of consumers, but ultimately decided to not bring it to market.</p><p>Roku has been making some headway in cooperating with third-party companies in the audio space with a licensing program for third-party sound bars and speakers. Participating companies can market their devices as Roku TV Ready and integrate software to simplify setup. Roku TV Ready partners include TCL, Hisense, Enclave, Sound United and Bose, with Element scheduled to launch its own Roku TV Ready products this month. On Friday, Roku also announced that TCL would launch the first Roku TV Ready wireless sound bar in the coming months.</p>
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Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
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January 27, 2021 17:22 EST
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